April 25, 2012 AT 10:44 am

Happy birthday DNA – Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid

“Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” was an article published by James D. Watson and Francis Crick in the scientific journal Nature in its 171st volume on pages 737–738 (dated April 25, 1953). It was the first publication which described Rosalind Franklin’s discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. This discovery had a major impact onbiology, particularly in the field of genetics.

This article is often termed a “pearl” of science because it is brief and contains the answer to a fundamental mystery about living organisms. This mystery was the question of how it was possible thatgenetic instructions were held inside organisms and how they were passed from generation to generation. The article presents a simple and elegant solution, which surprised many biologists at the time who believed that DNA transmission was going to be more difficult to detail and understand.